Archives for
August 2011

The 2011 MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs) broke records on both MTV and Twitter. At 10:35 p.m. ET, Beyonce's live performance and baby bump reveal generated 8,868 tweets per second. Trendrr put together this infographic that breaks down the social TV as...

The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. Name: Mingle Quick Pitch: Introduce yourself ...

It seems that Samsung has decided to let us in on all its secrets ahead of the IFA trade show, held in Berlin September 2-7. After LTE versions of Galaxy S II and Galaxy Tab 8.9, the company announced a trio of Bada-powered handsets: Wave 3, Wave M a...

Microsoft's file management application Windows Explorer will get a new interface in its next iteration, the company revealed in a blog post. First revealed in April, the new Explorer will be a part of the upcoming new desktop OS from Microsoft, Wind...

Facebook may be the default platform for sharing -- and over-sharing -- just about anything. Now Foodily's new Facebook app, launched Tuesday, gives cooking enthusiasts a streamlined feed for recipe sharing on the social network. The recipe search en...

Welcome to this morning's edition of “First To Know,” a series in which we keep you in the know on what’s happening in the digital world. We’re keeping our eyes on three particular stories of interest today. Samsung Unveils Bada 2.0 Smartphones After...

Pizza delivery chain Domino's has launched an iPad app in the UK App Store that lets you order a pizza directly from your tablet. Besides ordering dinner, you can also use the app to find the nearest Domino's outlet or to track the pizza's voyage to ...

The Stars of Social Good Series is supported by CITGO and the Fueling Good Campaign, helping to change the world through contributions to local charities. Spend enough time on the Internet and you'll inevitably bump into a "meme" or two. Memes are co...

After building a computer program that imitates the way humans converse (a chatbot), the team at Cornell's Creative Machines Lab couldn't resist pairing the program with itself for some small talk. The conversation's tone quickly turned argumentative...

In its fiscal Q1 2012 earnings report released Tuesday, Barnes & Noble announced that digital sales were up 37% compared to this time last year, but it wasn't enough to make up for a loss in store sales. Store sales declined 3% to $1 billion for the ...

Fashion retailer H&M, which has delayed plans to launch ecommerce on its own website until spring 2012, is making its first foray into ecommerce Tuesday via Elle.com. Beginning at noon ET, interested parties will be able to shop four key trends -- Co...

The second annual Mashable Media Summit is set for November 4, 2011 at The TimesCenter in New York City. This year's Summit will bring together thought leaders and influencers from across the industry to discuss how media organizations, journalism pr...

The TouchPad, HP's ill-fated tablet PC, may have a second life after all. The head of HP's soon-to-be-spun-off Personal Systems Group, Todd Bradley, told Reuters the new company could resurrect the TouchPad. "Tablet computing is a segment of the mark...

A new animated video shows the merits of sustainable farming with some cute visuals and a Willie Nelson cover of Coldplay's "The Scientist." The video, called "Back to the Start," tells the story of an adorable farmer who turns his organic farm into ...

Flickr has introduced a new privacy feature called geofences that allows users to create geographic privacy settings for photos' location data. With the new feature, Flickr users can draw a circle on a map to designate a geofence and then choose a ge...

Mozilla has offered a first glimpse of its Firefox for Tablets web browser. The company described the new product as "an evolution of its phone based predecessor, with some added enhancements that take advantage of a tablet’s larger screen size," in ...

The Social Analyst is a column by Mashable Editor-at-Large Ben Parr, where he digs into social media trends and how they are affecting companies in the space. The golden age of daily deals, led by the unprecedented growth of Groupon, seems to be comi...

Last month we told you about how Damon Albarn, the frontman for Gorillaz and Blur, packed up his music gear and a bunch of his producer friends to make a charity album in the Congo. The project, called DRC Music, has released three songs and an album...

The Beach Boys are embracing the social media age by crowdsourcing videos for two of their classic songs -- "Good Vibrations" and "Heroes and Villains" -- to generate some buzz for the Nov. 1 release of The SMiLE Sessions. The band and label Capitol ...

Onavo has released an Android app for managing data plans and avoiding overage charges. The startup aims to help smartphone users reduce and manage their data usage. Onavo Lite for Android tracks data consumption and provides users with tips based on...

Subscription streaming service MOG is now available on the Boxee Box, bringing MOG's library of 11 million songs to Boxee users, available in 320 kbps. MOG continues to increase its support for third-party devices. In addition to apps for the iPhone ...

"There's a huge mismatch between apps and the web," says Dalton Caldwell, co-founder of Mixed Media Labs. Caldwell's current project, App.net, seeks to bridge this gap and is expanding to support three additional mobile platforms Tuesday. App.net con...

Students who buy or rent a textbook from Chegg will no longer need to wait for it to arrive in the mail before they can start their homework. The online textbook vendor is launching a new "read while you wait" feature on Tuesday night that gives its ...

Estee Lauder Companies owns several of the most digitally-forward brands in the beauty category, several among them Clinique, MAC, Bobbi Brown, Aveda, and Estee Lauder proper. Clinique, for instance, was one of the first brands to add ecommerce to it...

Imagine if government agencies made social games. Who wouldn't enjoy the Federal Reserve's Asset-Backed SecuritiesVille, or the Census Bureau's World of FormCraft? Maybe not. But what about NASA? After all, exploring space is a staple motif of the vi...

Uniformed U.S. military personnel serving abroad can use Gmail's phone calling feature for free. The promotion starts now and runs through the end of the year. The free offering merely requires would-be callers to add and validate their .mil email ad...

In tablets generally and the iPad particularly, consumers have found a device conducive to reading news. It's no surprise then that a growing number of newsreading apps have appeared, from individual, branded apps such as The Wall Street Journal for ...

Google and Apple continue to eat up more of the smartphone market, while RIM and Microsoft continue to lose ground. According to new data from comScore, 82.2 million people in the U.S. owned a smartphone as of July 2011, a full 10% increase from Apri...

Each day, Mashable highlights one noteworthy YouTube video. Check out all our viral video picks. Fashion's having a little fun of the dancing variety lately, as Lanvin's fall campaign video (above) suggests. The video, which was shot by Steven Meisel...

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